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Work Programme (Wales)

I was about to say something that the hon. Gentleman might find helpful. There is worry that an area that might not be covered by the universal broadband proposals and that almost certainly by definition will be rural, will suddenly find itself increasingly disadvantaged. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point, and it is something that I have said to the Secretary of State back at Westminster, but I shall say it again publicly: we do not want the gap between urban and rural to get any larger. Even bearing in mind the fact that welcome improvements will be made to urban broadband, we in rural areas do not want to be left behind, because that will have a negative knock-on effect. My other plea when it comes to broadband is not to forget mobile phone coverage. The Government have not. I find it extraordinarily frustrating, given that I could communicate by mobile phone from Port Stanley earlier this year and from my sister-in-law’s house in the Alps without any difficulty—I think Kurdistan has better mobile phone coverage than Canterbury—that, oddly, I could not ring from my office in Whitland to the office in Brecon of my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire because we do not have mobile phone coverage. That seems to be an increasingly difficult problem. As I have said in the House, I cannot even get a babysitter: none of the 16 to 18-year-olds in my area want to come to my house, because they cannot text their friends as there is no mobile signal. If for no other reason, may I suggest that we should not be left behind in terms of mobile phone coverage? Fourthly—and penultimately, you will be pleased to hear, Mr Caton—is education, which my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire touched on. A small manufacturing company, which I will not name, in the town of Whitland where I have my constituency office, wished to expand its work force last year by about 10%, from 65. The managing director was hugely frustrated that, despite offering good-quality, well paid jobs for life, the quality of the applicant—I do not criticise them, but the system to which they have been subjected over the years—was simply not up to what he needed for his technical manufacturing company. He was frustrated that students with great brains waved qualifications in golf course management and media studies in front of him, as though those courses were some kind of preparation for life. Not long before the election he said, ““If, once elected, you can do nothing else, do away with irrelevant subjects that do not prepare students for life, so that I can employ them. If I give them jobs for life, they can buy a house in our area, generate economic activity in our town and stay here with a career that they can enjoy, cherish and be proud of.”” The Under-Secretary of State has visited that manufacturing company, so he may want to comment. Finally, to expand on the points made by the hon. Member for Arfon about VAT, I cannot understand why—the Under-Secretary may be able to explain—there is such resistance in the Treasury to the adjustment of VAT rates, particularly those on holiday accommodation. We are one of only a handful of countries in the European Union that have not reduced VAT rates on holiday accommodation to generate economic activity. Every tourism lobby group, if we can still use that expression, makes the same point and about 19 European countries have come to the same conclusion. Deloitte has come up with a compelling piece of research showing that a lower VAT rate on holiday accommodation, as long as it encourages incomers from abroad, would have the positive effect of creating up to 100,000 direct jobs throughout the UK and goodness knows how many indirect jobs. I am not sure why the Treasury is so nervous, because the loss in the short term would be for a very short period, even on the most pessimistic estimates, and the long-term gain would be absolutely huge. We sometimes get lost in the jargon of the catchy phrases that are used about employment regeneration. I think south and west Wales, Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire are enterprise zones in their own right that are simply waiting for the key to unlock their potential. Lots of people have positive stories to tell and want to employ other people and to do real things in the real economy. They just tear out their hair when they hear us talk about all the fancy schemes and curious-sounding initiatives, because they are already there and, more often than not, all we need to do— I aim my words partly at the Welsh Assembly Government—is to get out of their way and to enable them to do what they are good at. If such people were able to do that well, it would have positive economic effects and result in other people getting jobs for life, which all members of the Committee are keen to see. It would also further the regeneration prospects of not only my little patch of south-west Wales, but the rest of Wales too.